Jehoahaz
The name Jehoahaz ("Yahweh has held") is borne by three Davidic and northern-line kings whose reigns the UPDV registers across Kings, Chronicles, and Jeremiah. One is the son of Jehu who reigns seventeen years over Israel under unbroken Aramean pressure; one is the son of Jehoram of Judah, more often called Ahaziah, who reigns a single year and dies in Jehu's purge; and one is the son of Josiah, also called Shallum, whose three-month reign is cut off by Pharaoh-Necoh into an Egyptian deportation. The three figures cluster around three different crises — Hazael's campaigns, Jehu's coup, and Necoh's invasion — and their reigns line up at three different junctures of Davidic and Omride history.
Jehoahaz son of Jehu, king of Israel
The first Jehoahaz appears at his father's death-bed succession. After Jehu sleeps with his fathers and is buried in Samaria, "Jehoahaz his son reigned in his stead" (2Ki 10:35) — the standard Deuteronomistic succession-clause installing the second generation of the Nimshi line on the northern throne.
His full reign-summary opens 2 Kings 13. He begins to reign "in the three and twentieth year of Joash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah" and reigns "seventeen years" over Israel in Samaria (2Ki 13:1). The verdict is the standard Jeroboam-line classification: he "did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, with which he made Israel to sin; he did not depart therefrom" (2Ki 13:2).
Yahweh's answer to that verdict is sustained Aramean pressure. He is delivered "into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael, continually" (2Ki 13:3). Yet the chapter opens a single petition-window inside the oppression: "Jehoahaz implored Yahweh, and Yahweh listened to him; for he saw the oppression of Israel, how that the king of Syria oppressed them" (2Ki 13:4). Yahweh's response is the granting of a deliverer — "Yahweh gave Israel a savior, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians; and the sons of Israel dwelt in their tents as formerly" (2Ki 13:5) — though the parenthetical that follows registers an undiminished fault: "Nevertheless they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, with which he made Israel to sin, but they walked in them: and the Asherah also remained in Samaria" (2Ki 13:6).
The military reduction that frames the petition is severe. Yahweh "did not leave to Jehoahaz of the people but fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen; for the king of Syria destroyed them, and made them like the dust in threshing" (2Ki 13:7). His reign closes with the standard regnal-summary: "Jehoahaz slept with his fathers; and they buried him in Samaria: and Joash his son reigned in his stead" (2Ki 13:9).
He is named once more in passing as the patronym of his son Jehoash. The accession of Amaziah of Judah is dated "in the second year of Joash son of Joahaz king of Israel" (2Ki 14:1), and Amaziah's later challenge is delivered "to Jehoash, the son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu, king of Israel" (2Ki 14:8) — fixing the three-generation Jehu / Jehoahaz / Jehoash pedigree on the northern throne.
Jehoahaz son of Jehoram (= Ahaziah of Judah)
The second Jehoahaz is the youngest son of Jehoram of Judah and is more commonly known as Ahaziah. The Chronicler establishes the name-equation directly in his account of the Philistine-and-Arabian raid on Jehoram: enemies "came up against Judah, and broke into it, and carried away all the substance that was found in the king's house, and his sons also, and his wives; so that there was never a son left him, except Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons" (2Ch 21:17). The Chronicler's later patronym for Joash king of Judah closes the same loop — Amaziah is "the son of Joash the son of Jehoahaz" (2Ch 25:23), the same Davidic line elsewhere traced through Ahaziah.
His accession is registered against the northern regnal-count: "In the twelfth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah began to reign" (2Ki 8:25). The Chronicler fixes his accession-age and reign-length in a tight twenty-years-old / one-year-in-Jerusalem / Athaliah-the-daughter-of-Omri formula: "Ahaziah was twenty years old when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri" (2Ch 22:2). The Kings-account gives the accession-age as "two and twenty" rather than twenty (2Ki 8:26) and stamps the same Omride mother-line on the throne-record. The verdict is keyed entirely to the Omride match: "he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, as did the house of Ahab; for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab" (2Ki 8:27).
His one campaign is the joint Ramoth-gilead expedition with his Omride uncle. He goes "with Joram the son of Ahab to war against Hazael king of Syria at Ramoth-gilead: and the Syrians wounded Joram" (2Ki 8:28); when Joram retires to Jezreel for healing, "Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to see Joram the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick" (2Ki 8:29) — the sick-call that places him at Jezreel exactly when Jehu rides up to seize the northern throne.
The narrative of Jehu's purge in 2 Kings 9 carries Ahaziah of Judah through three stations. First he is co-located with Joram inside Jezreel: "Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah king of Judah came down to see Joram" (2Ki 9:16). Second, the two kings sortie out together: "Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot, and they went out to meet Jehu, and found him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite" (2Ki 9:21). Third, after Jehu strikes Joram down with an arrow between the arms (2Ki 9:24), Ahaziah's flight ends in his own death: "when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden-house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, 'Him too. Kill him.' [This happened] in the chariot at the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam. And he fled to Megiddo, and died there" (2Ki 9:27). His slaves "carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in the city of David" (2Ki 9:28). The chapter closes with a second cross-date: "in the eleventh year of Joram the son of Ahab, Ahaziah began to reign over Judah" (2Ki 9:29).
The Chronicler's parallel adds a Samaria-hiding capture. Jehu "sought Ahaziah, and they caught him (now he was hiding in Samaria), and they brought him to Jehu, and slew him; and they buried him, for they said, He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought Yahweh with all his heart. And the house of Ahaziah had no power to hold the kingdom" (2Ch 22:9). The Jehoshaphat-grandfather memorial-clause grants him a grave; the throne-loss that follows dispossesses his house entirely.
The forty-two brothers of Ahaziah meet the same end on the road. "Jehu met with the brothers of Ahaziah king of Judah, and said, Who are you⁺? And they answered, We are the brothers of Ahaziah: and we go down to greet the sons of the king and the sons of the queen" (2Ki 10:13). Jehu's order is brief: "Take them alive. And they took them alive, and slew them at the pit of the shearing-house, even two and forty men; neither did he leave any of them" (2Ki 10:14).
Athaliah's usurpation follows immediately on her son's death. "When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal seed of the house of Judah" (2Ch 22:10). The Davidic line is preserved only by Jehoshabeath, who "took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king's sons who were slain, and put him and his nurse in the bedchamber" (2Ch 22:11). Joash "was hid with them in the house of God six years: and Athaliah reigned over the land" (2Ch 22:12).
Ahaziah's earlier Davidic temple-dedications survive the Jehu-purge as part of Judah's hallowed treasure. A generation later, Jehoash of Judah will draw on them under Aramean pressure: he "took all the hallowed things that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah, his fathers, kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own hallowed things, and all the gold that was found in the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and of the king's house, and sent it to Hazael king of Syria" (2Ki 12:18) — the same Hazael who had pressed the northern Jehoahaz son of Jehu so heavily.
Jehoahaz son of Josiah (= Shallum)
The third Jehoahaz is named both as Jehoahaz in Kings and Chronicles and as Shallum in Chronicles' genealogy and in Jeremiah. The Chronicler's list of Josiah's sons gives the genealogical placement: "And the sons of Josiah: the firstborn Johanan, the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum" (1Ch 3:15).
His accession follows immediately on Josiah's death at Megiddo. Josiah's slaves "carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb. And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and made him king in his father's stead" (2Ki 23:30). The Chronicler's parallel records the same popular-enthronement: "the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father's stead in Jerusalem" (2Ch 36:1).
The reign-summary is brief. "Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah" (2Ki 23:31). The verdict is the standard fathers-formula: "he did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done" (2Ki 23:32).
The three months end in Egyptian intervention. "Pharaoh-necoh put him in bonds at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and put the land to a tribute of a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold" (2Ki 23:33). The Chronicler's parallel registers the same fine: "the king of Egypt deposed him at Jerusalem, and fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold" (2Ch 36:3). Necoh installs his brother Eliakim under a new throne-name — "Pharaoh-necoh made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim: but he took Jehoahaz away; and he came to Egypt, and died there" (2Ki 23:34) — and the Chronicler closes the deportation in a single line: "Neco took Joahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt" (2Ch 36:4). The successor's first administrative act is the silver-and-gold tax that meets Necoh's tribute-demand: "Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he taxed the land to give the silver according to the mouth of Pharaoh: he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land, of every one according to his taxation, to give it to Pharaoh-necoh" (2Ki 23:35).
Jeremiah's oracle on this same king is delivered under his given name Shallum. The prophet sets the contrast first: "Don't weep⁺ for the dead, neither bemoan him; but weep intensely for him who goes away; for he will return no more, nor see his native country" (Jer 22:10). The oracle proper then names the operative-king and seals his fate: "For thus says Yahweh concerning Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, [and] who went forth out of this place: He will not return there anymore" (Jer 22:11). The closing verse fixes the place of his death: "in the place where they have led him captive, there he will die, and he will see this land no more" (Jer 22:12).
Three Jehoahazes, three crises
The three figures who share this name align with three distinct points of pressure on the divided kingdoms. The first Jehoahaz, son of Jehu, is the northern king pressed continually by Hazael and Benhadad, whose petition-window opens an answered cry inside an unbroken oppression and whose dynasty is reduced to dust-like remnants of fifty horsemen and ten chariots. The second, son of Jehoram of Judah, more often called Ahaziah, is the one-year Davidic king bound by marriage to Ahab's house, swept up at the Naboth-field confrontation, and routed through the ascent of Gur to a Megiddo death — the king whose mother Athaliah's seizure nearly empties the Davidic line altogether. The third, son of Josiah, is the post-Megiddo three-month Davidic king whose Libnah-mothered enthronement by the people of the land is cut off at Riblah and routed into a death in Egypt, sealed by Jeremiah's oracle as a permanent exile from his own land.